The present disclosure relates to holders and supports, generally, and to multiple-purpose, light duty holders and support brackets that may be quickly mounted and de-mounted, in particular. Because the apparatus may be so readily installed and removed, it is particularly suited for supporting articles such as hospital bed controls, intravenous medication dispensers, blood bottles, telephones, beverage containers, flashlights, fishing poles, trays of small parts, w tools, or other objects that are preferably removed or relocated easily.
Many vocational and recreational activities are more easily performed if some object can be held in a desired position without the continuing assistance of a person. For example, it is often helpful to have a flashlight illuminate an object such as a threaded fastener or a knot while a person manipulates the object. Some tasks simply do not leave a person with a hand free to hold a needed tool or part.
To illustrate the generality of the problem, one need only consider the variety of techniques that have been tried to make light available at the location at which a person is working. Miners and campers have long used head lamps. A portable light can be mounted on a hat or headband and used to illuminate the area the wearer faces, but such head lamps can require frequent adjustment and often are quite annoying to other members of a group. One type of flashlight incorporates a magnet in the handle for holding it in place. Unfortunately, the orientation of an iron bearing surface is not always favorable for lighting purposes. Another flashlight has a clip for attachment to clothing, panels, or lines. Another type uses a heavy battery as a base and a pivotable lamp head to direct light to the desired area. None of these solutions has proven wholly satisfactory which suggests why so much inventive effort is directed to the field.
Building construction, repair, maintenance, equipment installation, machine work, vehicle repair and maintenance, and home projects are among the activities that often must be undertaken in substandard lighting conditions. Workers in these activities often must carry all of the tools that they expect to use for a specific job long distances to reach the location at which the work will be performed. It is rarely practical to carry bulky or complex additional items such as light stands in addition to the tools, parts and materials that are required. Workers will frequently carry flashlights to enable them to go forward with their appointed tasks. They might carry and use simple, lightweight, compact mounting brackets to allow them to use their flashlights to illuminate a work area more easily if such brackets were known to work.
Hospitals are an example of an environment in which specialized arrangements of tubes, containers, wires, sensors, controls, and other items must be established temporarily, for periods ranging from a few minutes to several days. Although hospitals use rails to restrain patients from accidentally sliding out of bed, patients often find that things like call buttons, operating controls, and telephones do slide out of their reach. If easily attached and easily removed support brackets for holding items in the desired arrangement around patients could be provided at low cost, hospitals might find fewer requests for nursing assistance to re-locate television or bed operating controls that slip beyond a patient""s reach.
Another example of an environment in which it is often difficult for people to properly secure needed items is the wheel chair. Persons who rely on wheel chairs or motorized chairs for their mobility often find it difficult to keep often used items such as a drinking vessel, a notepad, a urine collection bag, or other personal items secured and accessible within the confines of the wheel chair structure. The present disclosure gives wheel chair users a simple means for conveniently securing the previously mentioned articles, as well as many others, to the chair.
People who fish from the banks of lakes, rivers or ponds often find it inconvenient to hold their fishing poles or rods continuously. Ingenious fishing rod holders have been proposed; U.S. Pat. No. 1,410,798 to Cowdery is but one example. However, the previously patented fishing rod holders suffer from one or more shortcomings: the mechanism may be too complex, the range of adjustment too small, the apparatus too cumbersome, or the mounting requirements impractical to fulfill.
Of course, temporary lighting for people in the construction trades, temporary hospital patient fixtures and accessory retainers, and temporary holders for fishing rods are but examples that illustrate representative uses for temporary holders and supports. Many other activities are made easier if temporary supports or holders can be readily set up and removed with a minimum investment of time and expense.
My discovery solves many of the problems inherent in previously known temporary supports. It is easy to install, inexpensive, simple, lightweight and compact. One embodiment I disclose can be attached to an existing building structural component (e.g. xc2xd inch electrical conduit) by placing the bracket portion over the structural component and twisting the bracket xc2xc turn. Likewise, the present apparatus can be mounted to a great variety of fixed elongated members with a simple xc2xc turn. For example, the bracket may be attached to safety rails, ring stands, hospital bedposts, electrical conduit, water pipes, gas pipes, scaffolding, and many other solidly mounted structural elements such as brackets, mounts, standards, holders, and the like. For ease of reference, the object to which my bracket attaches will be called a prop, and the term prop is explicitly defined to include all objects to which my bracket can be attached. It is possible to use the handles of a two-wheeled hand truck as props. It is likewise possible to use the handle of a cart, or of a broom, as the prop to which an embodiment of the present multiple-purpose support system attaches.
After the bracket is attached to a prop, the bracket may be used to support any desired object that weighs less than the holding capacity of both the bracket and of the prop, as configured. In one embodiment, the bracket is fitted with a hook from which a blood bottle can be suspended. In another embodiment, the bracket is fitted with a series of hooks capable of holding several objects, for example, frequently used tools. In another embodiment, the bracket may be fitted with a spring clamp that can hold objects such as a map, a set of instructions, a sign, or the like. In another embodiment, the bracket may be fitted with one end of a bendable, non-resilient, shape-retaining linkage that has a holder at its other end. One example of such a linkage is the snap-apart flexible coolant conduit manufactured by Lockwood Industries of Lake Oswego, Oregon.
Although many other utility support devices and brackets have been designed, one problem remains that none has successfully overcomexe2x80x94the necessity of compromising the design of the device so that it is sufficiently rigid to support the desired object from the lever arm created by the device itself, without making the device excessively rigid, heavy, bulky or wasteful of materials. It is to be appreciated that any support member will perform more satisfactorily if the purpose to which it is put is appropriate for the design. This principle can be illustrated by consideration of the ordinary laboratory ring stand.
A laboratory ring stand usually has as its base a fairly heavy rectangular plate that is placed flat on a laboratory bench. Securely attached toward one end of, and perpendicular to, the upper surface of the plate is a rod that extends upward about two feet. A clamp can attach a second rod perpendicular to the vertical rod so that the second rod extends parallel to the laboratory bench.
It is to be understood that when a load applied to the second rod is situated farther from the vertical rod, the lever arm is effectively increased. The longer lever arm applies more torque to the clamp. When the load exceeds the capacity of the components, the arrangement will tip, bend or break. If the clamp is made stronger, the clamp will not break, but some other component of the system will either bend or tip. The difficulty in designing the proper clamp strength is that the length of the lever arm can vary, as can the load.
One embodiment of my system provides improved performance because the torque load that can be transferred to the bracket is fixed. By using a bendable, non-resilient, shape-retaining, linkage between the bracket and the object being held, the system is prevented from overloading. When the load exceeds the torque capacity of the linkage, it will simply deflect so as to prevent overloading that would damage components of the support system.
To better illustrate this benefit of my system, it may be useful to compare what might happen if someone were to temporarily support a light from an installed section of rigid pipe. A clamp might be attached to the pipe by tightening a screw. A horizontal member may be attached to the pipe and a light suspended from it. If the horizontal member is lengthened and a second light added, the rigid pipe might then be so loaded that the fasteners holding it in place would give way. Using my system, however, the interlocking conduit would simply bend as soon as the load exceeded the holding power of any of the individual interlocking sections.
In addition to the first advantage of my system, that it can be installed and removed quickly and easily; and the second advantage, that it is less likely to be accidentally overloaded; a third advantage of my system, compared to the support systems previously known, is that it is readily adaptable for fitting to a variety of previously installed props in addition to being suited for ready mounting on receiving apparatus fabricated expressly for the bracket disclosed herein. A small assortment of brackets of the type disclosed in the accompanying figures can be adapted for attachment to a wide range of pipes, rods, tubes, bars, and structural shapes. It is also possible to incorporate bushings or adaptors that allow the present system to connect to an extended size range of props.
Although the bracket of the present system may be made of a variety of materials, such as steel, spring steel, and several polymers, it is known that one material that can be used is injection-molded polyvinyl chloride. It is also possible to fabricate the bracket using coated or composite materials. Likewise, it is known that the interlocking conduit from which the positionable extension portion is preferably made can be manufactured from a variety of materials, preferably polymeric materials. Additional elements, such as hooks, clasps, hangers, trays and other holders that are connected to the bracket portion directly or by means of interlocking conduit may be made of any of a number of materials, including wood, metal and plastic, found suitable for a particular application.
It is to be understood that a particular advantage of the present bracket is that it is believed that the cost to manufacture it is low enough that it will be possible to use it as a single-use item. This low cost of manufacture and high versatility make the bracket particularly adapted for use in hospital, clinical and other medical settings.
There have been attempts to fashion supports that are easily installed and removed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,105,083 to Lamb discloses an electric light support made of thin leaf springs that are brought into proximity with the member to which the support is attached with the potential for marring the surface during use. Behrle in U.S. Pat. No. 4,877,165 discloses a fishing rod holder into which a rod may be quickly fitted and from which the rod may be easily removed. However, neither device is adapted for general purpose holding applications. The attempts others have made to develop a general purpose holder that can take advantage of existing structural features to support objects have not been successful. Earlier attempts have generally failed either because the apparatus was insufficiently versatile or because the mounting requirements were too difficult for the user to fulfill.
What is needed, then, is a support system that may be easily attached to a variety of commonly found support structures such as hospital bed frames, wheel chairs, laboratory stands, electrical conduits, water pipes, structural tubing, and the like. In addition, the support system must be easy and quick to install and remove without tools. This support system may, for example, be used to hold intravenous bottles to a support rod or to an i.v. stand in a clinic or hospital. A preferred embodiment of the invention is adapted to attach to the safety rails commonly used with hospital beds. It may also be attached to an installed length of pipe, electrical conduit, railing, or other support structure to hold objects such as a tray of parts, a work light, a fishing pole, or other items.
The present invention is easily installed by placing the open side over a prop and then twisting the bracket xc2xc turn to engage it fully with the prop. A slightly different embodiment is preferred for brackets that mount on props that have a square cross-section than is believed optimum for brackets that are used on props that have a round cross-section.
The preferred embodiment includes an elongated central member, or saddle, and two oppositely facing xe2x80x9cCxe2x80x9d shaped resilient members, or arms, one at each end of the central member, the arms and saddle having a common longitudinal axis. In an embodiment adapted for attachment to support members that have square cross-sections, the arms are xe2x80x9cLxe2x80x9d shaped rather than xe2x80x9cCxe2x80x9d shaped and the saddle may be angled rather than curved. An attachment element, or adaptor barrel, extends generally radially outwardly from the central member and is generally perpendicularly to the longitudinal axis. It is also possible to provide gussets or wings that extend outward from the central member so that the bracket may be more easily manipulated and to strengthen the bracket.
The attachment element may be a specific element such as a hook, a clamp, or a specialty holder. More generally, the attachment element may be a shape adapted for receiving a positionable extension portion, preferably a non-resilient, flexible, interlocking conduit-type elongated linkage. In some embodiments, it may be preferred to use electrically conductive materials or coatings to reduce static electricity build-up and/or to provide power or signal transmission. The interlocking linkage may connect to the bracket at one end and have connected to the other end any of the holders, clamps, hooks, bags, lights, trays, or other devices that may be desired by the user.